Lawrence: Your comment is potentially misleading. This data only shows distribution in a geographic sense, not sociologically, as in the Rich v the Poor. And it does not display wealth at all. GDP is a measure of the value of one year's production. Wealth is the value of the accumulation of capital. So, instead of concluding that this map shows "distribution of wealth" one might better state that the map shows the "geographic concentration of production." In that case, it is accurate to claim the US and China have a greater inequality than Japan or Europe.